Pierre-Jules Renard (February 22, 1864 – May 22, 1910) was a french novelist and playwright known mostly for Poil de carotte (Carrot Top), an autobiographical novel describing his lonely childhood living with a cold family, and Les Histoires Naturelles (Nature Stories). His fictional characters are often described as sharp, ironic and sometimes cruel.

Renard always considered himself an artist first and “a hunter of images;” a trait he used regularly using fine detail in his descriptive writing with an artist’s eye.

He was also a diarist, best known for this five-volume Journal, which had a significant influence on other authors like W. Somerset Maugham, Susan Sontag and Samuel Beckett, who thought he was dreamy.